Tag: Sulari Gentill

Discovery through Story

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by Sulari Gentill Part 4: Self Within the universe of a novel, its author is a kind of god, an elemental force directing the fates of characters, conjuring crises and granting reprieves. She creates life… people who jump from the text to walk into the imaginations of readers. Protagonists who exist independently of her, continuing to make friends from the printed page long after their author has expired. In my previous posts for the Southerly I have discussed elements of the story which may be discovered in and through the creative process of writing. In this instalment I’m turning the…

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Discovery through Story

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by Sulari Gentill Part 3: Plot The supremacy of characterisation over plot or plot over characters is an old and worn argument. At one end of the spectrum there are those who consider plot merely a tool by which character is developed, at the other those who hold that characters are simply generic cogs in the machinery of a plot. Some writers develop detailed plans broken down by chapter and scene; others start at the first word of a novel and just write till it’s finished. Most writers and readers exist somewhere between. I tend not to know what the…

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Discovery through Story

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by Sulari Gentill Part 2: Characters When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. – Ernest Hemmingway In the space of time it takes to read a book, the reader comes to know a character, to discover his or her strengths and flaws, fears and dreams, to make a friend or find a foe. For every hour that the gentle reader spends this way, the author must spend many days discovering the person they have created. The process by which each author does this varies from those who first map…

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Discovery through Story

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by Sulari Gentill, Part 1: The illumination of fact Humanity is a storytelling species. Storytelling is the way in which we order, understand, remember and explore both the world and ourselves. We communicate with the exchange of stories, some functionary and mundane, others obscure reflections of reality, and still others, epics, which speak to the nature of being. Tales told in reminiscence, in aspiration, with pride or malice. Stories nonetheless. Both the most frivolous and thoughtful expression of the human condition, stories are the diet on which we nurture the thinking of our children, and the way in which we…

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January Monthly Blogger – Sulari Gentill!

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Our thanks to Hazel Smith for her wonderful posts. Our guest writer for January is Sulari Gentill. Not so long ago, Sulari Gentill was a corporate lawyer serving as a director on public boards, with only a vague disquiet that there was something else she was meant to do. That feeling did not go away until she began to write. And so Sulari became the author of the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries: thus far, six historical crime novels chronicling the life and adventures of her 1930s Australian gentleman artist, and the Hero Trilogy, based on the myths and epics of the…

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